Beth Ovens is a multidisciplinary artist exploring childhood nostalgia through the use of craft and analogue technology. Their work focuses on recapturing and re-examining ways of making from their childhood, particularly within the domestic environment. They explore the imagery of making through analogue films, experimenting with the view of the camera frame and the way this can be used to manipulate perspective. Their practice is process driven; Wanting to remain authentic to the materials and processes they use, there is little emphasis on editing, often choosing to show work as it is and as it happened.

PLAY, is an interactive work exploring instinctive making and play. The work consists of two monitors displaying peoples hands making objects from playdough, a long table, chairs, and a box containing playdough with a set of instructions for visitors.

Visitors are encouraged to take a seat at the table and interact with playdough, made by the artist from a childhood recipe. They are invited to explore, make and play! When they have created an item from playdough the instructions request whatever is made is left on the table. Throughout the course of the exhibition the table will slowly fill up with these small handcrafted objects. The playdough objects exposed to the air will begin to harden and crystallise, thus becoming defunct.

Two CRT monitors are positioned behind the table, displaying a documented workshop where people were invited to sit at the table and interact with the work.

The resulting videos show hands moving in and out of frame. The footage is intentionally zoomed in to focus just on people hands and the way they move around the material. There is an anonymity to the participants, even when their hand gestures remain so distinct. Part of the aim of creating this experience was to start conversations. With one of the two videos being slightly longer than the other, when looped, the hands on the partnering screen are never the same, creating new images with different hands – new conversations between people that didn’t sit at the table together.